I keep seeing how important it is to have a positive morning routine in our lives. Many successful people have shared their morning habits and have stressed the importance of having them. So today, I will talk about my morning routine, and I hope that it can motivate you and help you to create new empowering habits and include them into your morning routine.
What is a positive morning routine?
Every day when you wake up, there are special things you do, things that you do even without thinking. If you analyze those things you currently do, would you say that this stuff is positive or empowering? If you are like most people, you will realize that your habits not only are not positive, but they are not helping you to achieve what you desire in life.
Nowadays, is very common to wake up and right away grab your mobile phone and log into Facebook, or read your email or just stuff that keeps you from working on yourself and on your mental attitude to face your day more assertively.
A positive morning routine includes activities that will change your attitude and the way you prepare for your day. Activities that feed your mind, your body and your spirit.
The miracle morning
My morning routine is based on the best-selling book The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. This book changed my life, and once I read it, I was able to change a lot of things in my routine that translated to my life. And I absolutely encourage you to read it and to take part in Hal Elrod’s amazing community on Facebook. This guy is just amazing.
But well, in this post I will give you a glimpse of my morning routine and what are the benefits and advantages of each component.
Why is it important to have a morning routine?
The primary objective of having a good morning routine is to change bad habits, but at the same time, you are preparing your mind and your attitude for the day. You will be more relaxed and less stressed. That in itself it’s a significant benefit.
If you change the way you wake up, you will definitely modify the way you see your life. Instead of waking up because you have to, you will start waking you because you love to, you will see this as a new day, a new opportunity to create the life you want, to enjoy your day.
Instead of snoozing ten times before waking up, you will wake up with a smile on your face. Isn’t this enough? Well, if you are still not convinced then maybe the following benefits will change your mind:
- You will be more positive
- You will be less stressed
- You will have more energy throughout your day
- You will feel better and be healthier
- It will increase your motivation to start your day
- It reduces the chance of procrastination
Activities to include in your morning routine
Meditation
Meditation is one of those things that could help you significantly. According to a study from the Johns Hopkins University, meditation can help you to reduce stress, depression, and pain. But not only that, meditation can contribute to knowing yourself, can help you to keep a calmer mind and start transforming from a negative way of thinking to a more balanced and positive mindset.
The most basic form of meditation is a straightforward process. All you need is 5 or 10 minutes each day.
Some easy steps for beginners are:
- Find a quiet space where you won’t be disturbed for 5 or 10 minutes
- Be comfortable. Find a posture where you feel comfortable; it doesn’t matter if you prefer to sit or to lay down.
- Close your eyes. Focus on this time. Become present
- Focus on your breath. Take slow deep breaths.
- Once you are calm and totally focused on your breath, allow your breathing to become natural.
- If you find your mind wandering, just bring it back gently and refocus on your breath.
There are a lot of ways to meditate, so all you have to do is find a way to do it and start benefiting from this great practice. In the following post, you will find some meditation practices that will help you find the one you feel more comfortable with: Find your meditation style
The goal of meditation is not to control your thoughts; it’s to stop letting them control you.
Gratitude
Gratitude is the most amazing thing you can do when you wake up. Just by doing this you will be able to feel better instantly.
At the beginning of my practice I didn’t know the importance of gratitude, but by now I can only tell you that all the benefits that have been written about it are true. There’s something special about focusing only on the good things; it shifts your perspective and your mood to a more joyful state of being. When you start remarking all those things that you take for granted and noticing all that you have accomplished so far you realize that life is good, that even if you are passing through a difficult stage of life, there are always good things to be grateful for.
There have been a lot of studies stating the benefits of gratitude, in the Happier Human blog, there’s an amazing post showing these studies that you can read if you are interested: The Science of Gratitude
Some of the benefits are:
Psychological and Emotional
- Higher levels of positive emotions
- More relaxed
- More resilient
- Happier and more positive
- More optimistic
- Increased self-esteem
Physical and health
- Improve sleep
- Stronger immune systems
- Lower blood pressure
- Increased energy and exercise more
- Less sick
Social
- Improved relationships
- More loving and compassionate
- More outgoing
- Friendlier
It only takes a couple of minutes to practice gratitude, but the important thing here is not to only list things you are thankful for just because you need to be grateful. Rather, think why you are you grateful to have them, think a moment when you were enjoying yourself with that person or that thing, feel your emotions. This is the secret of gratitude, to allow yourself to feel that happiness and love.
Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings.
Positive Affirmations
Affirmations are the most simple way to change your attitude. Instead of going along with all those negative things you tell yourself about you and the things you do, you start consciously changing those statements and reprogramming your mind with more positive ideas and thoughts.
By frequently repeating more positive and empowering statements, you maintain your objective in mind, keep your motivation going and program your subconscious to start looking for things that will help you to accomplish your goals.
There are a lot of good resources and people that have dedicated their lives to offer beautiful positive affirmations. You can choose the most appealing statement for yourself and your situation and start repeating it daily for a period of time or a number of times.
The best way to have better and faster results is by visualizing while you are repeating the affirmation. This way your subconscious mind will feel as if it’s already happening.
It’s the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief, and once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.
Visualize
Visualizing has been used by athletes, dancers, and performers as a training technique to achieve goals and success. Psychologists use it as a tool for relaxation and as a method of rehearsing an action. It has also been used as a method to improve patients with depression and to boost self-esteem.
By visualizing you can train yourself to get those goals you set yourself to do, and you can get into a more relaxed and positive state of being.
The difference between daydreaming and visualization is that in daydreaming you are just passing the time, you are not consciously creating something you want, and most importantly you are not expecting it to happen. In visualization you are aware of that you wish to obtain, you are creating it and programming yourself to do it.
To make visualization a tool for accomplishing and achieving your objectives and goals, you must use it the right way, follow these steps and start getting the benefits from it.
- Set your desired goal
- Start imaging yourself doing or achieving it
- Little by little add more details until you feel that you are living it
- Try to use all your senses
- Repeat again and again
Another way of using this technique is to create a vision board. Fill your environment with images and objects that remind you of your objective. Allow yourself to feel, to see, and to hear your dream come true.
A vision is not just a picture of what could be; it is an appeal to our better selves, a call to become something more
Motivational Reading
Reading self-help books can inspire and motivate you to make the changes you have been dreaming about. They can give you more positive ideas and different ways to accomplish a task.
Sometimes we think that we don’t have the time to read a whole book, so we don’t start. But just by reading 20 pages every day, you will see that you get to read a lot of books by the end of the year.
By reading motivational or self-development books, you are growing and expanding yourself. You will relax, and start building a new positive mind.
Reading helps you stimulate your imagination and creativity; it will allow you to solve your problems in different ways. Just by being relaxed you will start to look things from a different perspective.
A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads only lives one.
Journaling
I think that when we hear or read about journaling, we imagine something entirely different from a self-development tool. We imagine a little girl writing in her diary, Dear diary… But let me tell you that journaling has been a fantastic tool in my self-growth journey. Before taking up the practice, I have never written a journal, and so I was on the fence about it, but now I cannot live without it.
Some benefits of journaling are:
- Helps you develop emotional intelligence
- Helps you achieve your goals
- Improves your communication skills
- Motivates you
- Helps you develop mindfulness
Let me say that there are a lot of different journals, so it is important that you choose the one you are most attracted to. Allow yourself to try a couple of them or create your own and start your practice.
Just take a couple of minutes each morning to write in your journal. Try to write about your emotions, your goals for the day, important tasks and positive actions you can do throughout your day to maintain a positive attitude and achieve your goals.
A personal journal is an ideal environment in which to “become”. It is a perfect place for you to think, feel, discover, expand, remember, and dream.
Exercise
We’ve heard and read about the benefits of exercising a million times. So I won’t get into that here. But I do want to stress the importance of it. Just by taking 10 minutes to work on yourself, on your body will do wonders for the mind.
If you want to grow and become a better person, then you will also have to dedicate some time to take care and honor your body. There is no other way to love yourself and enjoy life than to exercise yourself.
We all have 10 minutes to do something, even if it’s not running or something super active. Just by taking a walk or doing some yoga. That’s all it takes for you to have the benefits of exercising yourself.
To enjoy the glow of good health, you must exercise.
My morning routine
I do have to confess that nowadays I don’t do all these activities at the same time. I have a bed-time routine, and I split them. I do some of them in the morning and some of them at night. A couple of things I do twice, like gratitude and meditation. Exercise, I just do it in the middle of the day. Having two kids at home makes you a lot more flexible, so I am just grateful I am able to accomplish everything in one day. 😉
Journaling is a must for me; this makes my morning routine a lot easier and faster. A lot of activities that I suggested in this post are already included in my journal, so I just do them even without thinking.
The things that I just can’t live without are journaling, gratitude, and meditation, these things are a must for me, and I think including them in my routine has been the main reason for my mental attitude and the way I behave during the day.
My advice to you is to start by choosing a couple of activities that you can include in your morning routine, and I can assure you that just by doing them will create a significant impact in your life that in no time you will start including more if not all the activities I suggested.
So, all I can do is to encourage you to start today, make smaller changes, start adjusting your routine and see how your life changes.
What do you think about this? Will you be willing to change your routine?
Start today!
- Start by analyzing your morning routine. Think what can you do better. What are the things that you definitely need to change?
- Try these activities. Don’t start by trying them all at the same time. Try a couple of them and see how you feel.
- Choose a couple of things to include in your morning routine and do them. Avoid doing the negative stuff.
- Design your new positive morning routine
- Make a commitment and try to stick to your new routine for at least a couple of weeks.
- Come back and tell us what did you choose and how you feel?
Improve your day with new positive habits
Bullet Journal
This bullet journal will help you change your lifestyle and acquire new habits that will make you more productive, more grateful and happier.
In this guided journal, you’ll create a morning routine and an evening routine that include habits and practices that will help you improve your behaviour and change your current habits. This will lead you to achieve your goals while you get a more productive and happier life.
Remain positive and achieve your goals.
Resources:
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